


Dawn

by electricshoebox



Category: Dragon Age - All Media Types, Dragon Age: Inquisition
Genre: Angst, Gen, Introspection, M/M, Stream of Consciousness, Trespasser Spoilers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-10-19
Updated: 2015-10-19
Packaged: 2018-04-27 01:35:51
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,571
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5028613
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/electricshoebox/pseuds/electricshoebox
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>[Trespasser Spoilers] There were a thousand different ways Dorian nearly lost the Bull before he ever knew him. There were a thousand ways the Bull was a wonder for surviving them all.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Dawn

**Author's Note:**

> I've had thoughts circling around about Dorian reflecting on being so close to Seheron now, and how much more weight that might have when he and Bull are together. So I tried to wrangle them into something coherent. Many thanks to [serenity-fails](http://serenity-fails.tumblr.com) for beta-reading and encouraging and being generally wonderful. 
> 
> Please note: the "graphic depiction of violence" warning is for a vivid description of rumors of what happened on Seheron. If this is going to be triggering or uncomfortable for you, please skip the paragraph that begins "Dorian thought little of it when he was young." You can continue to the next paragraph after that without confusion. Take care, and thank you for reading <3

Minrathous fell still in the hour before dawn, as the sky turned the heavy gray of a night yielding. Dorian, sleepless, stood on his balcony and listened for the sea. The last of the drunkards and revelers had stumbled out of the streets and into their beds, but the first of the shopkeepers and errand slaves still slept. Without the sounds of markets full and shop doors opening and people laughing and shouting to fill the space between his house and the beach, the sound of the surf meeting the sand carried up the hill, and Dorian breathed.

To stand again in Minrathous felt at once right and strange. The city--perhaps all of Tevinter with it--seemed now both foreign and familiar; where he settled, but not where he called home, not truly. (That, until recently, had been an old room in a crumbling castle with half the roof missing and a garish pink quilt on the bed, and Dorian missed it fiercely.) Perhaps he would never again see Tevinter the way he had in his youth. Once, he looked out on the Nocen Sea from the edge of the coast outside Qarinus and saw only water. Now he looked out from a balcony in Minrathous and thought only of where it ended. 

As if on cue, the first sliver of a red sun rose on the horizon, crowned with clouds. There, far in the distance, a thin black line gutted through the light like a blighted wound. 

Seheron.

Dorian thought little of it when he was young. Everyone knew the tales, of course; some were used to scare naughty children, some were whispered as rumors, some were taught like history. The savage Qunari, more monsters than men, slaughtering the innocent in the streets, drinking the blood to satisfy their thirst. They forced down doors and dragged people from their homes in the night, forcing them into service to the Qun, burning the houses behind them. They poisoned and butchered the mages they failed to subdue, while they tortured and mutilated the ones they kept alive. Dramatic, these stories, and certainly exaggerated, but they piled one on top of another until they built some sort of truth simply on the virtue of number and repetition. Some nebulous, terrifying specter of vicious conquerors out to destroy all magic and all mages with it, accepted and forgotten, for the most part. Dorian had other things to think about, and that was another man’s war to fight.

Now, as he leaned on the railing and caught the whisper of the sea, he thought of the Iron Bull, and he wondered how many of those frightening tales told the deeds of his own people instead.

“No Qunari would accept a Tevinter mage so easily,” he told the Bull once. Dorian always was one to poke the hornet’s nest, as it were, and he’d been poking that one for weeks. It wasn’t that he wanted a fight, not really, not exactly. He simply wanted to stop waiting for one he knew was coming. If they were going to butt heads, or go for blood, then they’d better have it out and done with. What other end could there be? So he said this on a stormy evening in Crestwood, following up a muddy hill behind the Bull as the rain soaked through his leathers. “When should I expect a knife in the back?”

Bull had stopped and turned so suddenly that Dorian nearly stumbled straight into his chest. He’d scrambled backward, boots sliding in the mud. The Bull looked at him then, his one eye bright and hard, his face like stone. Dorian had never seen that look before.

“You ever use that fancy magic of yours to burn down a dormitory full of kids?”

Bull might as well have punched him in the gut. The air fled Dorian’s lungs just the same, sudden and startling, and he felt as if he’d lost his footing on more than just the wet grass. The image struck hard and fast and left him bewildered, trying to find where it fit in the conversation, in the train of his thoughts, in all the stories he remembered of Qunari and Tevinter conflict. He sensed, in some distant way that their short acquaintance couldn’t bring into focus, that he was seeing something of the Bull that he wasn’t meant to.

“Err… not today,” he had finally managed to say. And in an instant, it was all gone, and the Bull’s amused little smirk fell back in place as if it never left.

“Then I wouldn’t worry,” he said. He had turned and tromped further up the hill, and Dorian, still trying to catch his breath, followed after.

“Lot of other people need a knife in the back first,” Bull had added over his shoulder when Dorian caught up. 

Dorian thought of that moment often, now, when he stood on his balcony and looked out into the distance. He had felt back then like a man peering into the murky depths of a river, looking for something he saw sparkle in the sand at the bottom, but all he could see was the rush of the waves heading downstream. 

It was a long time before the Bull told Dorian anything more of Seheron than muttered comments like that. Nights the memories plagued him worst, he said even less, even once he finally began letting Dorian soothe him through it, as best he could. In fact, the first time he told Dorian a story from it was a good night, instead: ale in their bellies, the smell of sex in the air, sweat cooling on their skin. Dorian had twined himself around the Bull’s side, tracing one of the scars on his chest while Bull’s hand wandered an aimless path on Dorian’s hip. Maybe that was easier: warm silence, safe in their bed-- _their_ bed, now-- and far from sand or sea.

Dorian remembered the sound of Bull’s voice more than the story itself. None of the usual mirth and growl that stories of the boys drew out of him, with the memory of the thrill of the fight lingering and coloring his laughter. But neither was it bitter, angry, full of the vitriol that singed the edges of some of the comments he’d made about the place in the past. He was simply quiet, distant, nearly mechanical as he spoke. Dorian had held him a little tighter, and pressed a kiss to his shoulder when he finished. When Bull looked up at him, stone-faced as he had been on that hill in Crestwood, Dorian wanted--wildly, impossibly--to promise Bull he’d never have a reason to wear that expression again. Promises, promises, ones he couldn’t keep, ones Bull wouldn’t ask him to make. So he kissed it away instead, and then pressed a kiss to every scar he could reach, because each was a blow that missed the mark, that let the Bull find his way there, to that bed, to Dorian’s hands, to Dorian’s heart.

The sun rose higher, swallowing the shadow of Seheron as it went. How strange, now, to think of himself waking to countless mornings like this all those years ago, never knowing the greatest love he would ever know--and perhaps the very best man--woke to the same sun just across the sea. How strange to think that one morning Dorian woke thinking only of breakfast or research or what to wear, and the Bull woke to the same sun and wished he hadn’t. Dorian might have spent that day fussing over a spell form or puzzling over a theory, while Bull locked blades with an enemy in the jungle, tempted to let the next blow strike home.

There were a thousand different ways Dorian nearly lost the Bull before he ever knew him. There were a thousand ways the Bull was a wonder for surviving them all.

Dorian found himself almost grateful to the Qun, in some perverse way. At least believing in it kept the Bull alive, once. At least it carried him to his boys, one after another, and then to Dorian’s side.

Voices below interrupted Dorian’s thoughts--servants, headed to market. Horses trotted on the cobblestones in the distance, and wooden carts and barrows rolled after. Birds woke chattering in the trees, worrying the leaves. Dorian shook his head. Useless, such morose thoughts. The Bull slept somewhere in Orlais, far from the years he gave to that wretched place. The Bull was too good a man to hate Seheron completely--he saw its people when he thought of it, the lives that needed saving. Dorian was not too good a man, and bid it burn away with the dawn. 

He wondered, with a little smile, if that was how Bull felt about Tevinter. He certainly wouldn’t be the first. Dorian’s fingers reached to trace the crystal dangling from his neck. Dorian had never told the Bull that he could see Seheron from his window. But he let it remind him, now and then, when he caught a glimpse of it in the distance, of what mattered. Of the costs he never knew others had paid. Sighing, he pressed his fingers into the top of the crystal and felt it hum against his skin.

“Kadan,” said the Bull. His voice--warm, fond, a little groggy--rumbled through Dorian’s chest, and Dorian smiled.


End file.
